Shea has worked off and on since 1996 at Nike and about two years in the Innovation Kitchen. There were brief breaks in his resume to work in his own design studio and another to work in design for Levi Strauss & Co., in San Francisco. He spoke about his work at a seminar Wednesday morning titled "Innovation and the Creative Process," in the Companies That Care Symposium at The Nines Hotel.

The people who come up with the ideas for differently designed footwear, for gadgets and for apparel try to ignore their company's status as the largest sporting goods company in the world, Shea said.

"Successful companies over the long term," he said, "have a gravitational pull toward protecting that status."

And that tends to stifle creativity, he said. So it helps when people like Hatfield, who has designed basketball shoes for Michael Jordan and has worked with bicyclist Lance Armstrong on designing Livestrong and other products, urge unconventional thinking. But the push to innovate comes from even higher above than Hatfield, Shea said.

The Michael Shea file

Prior to his role in Nike's Innovation Kitchen, Michael Shea worked on a series of Nike global initiatives, including the launch of Nike Plus, 2004 Olympic Summer Games, World Cup 2006 and 2010, and the launch of Nike Sportswear across the globe. Prior to joining Nike, Michael served as a creative brand design consultant and strategic collaborator for a wide range of clients including Levi Strauss & Co., Burton Snowboards, Analog Apparel, MTV Sports, Specialized Bicycle Components, IBM, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Gallery of Art, and The National Institutes of Health.

"Phil Knight says, 'Look, it's really risky not to take risk," Hatfield said of the company's chairman and co-founder.

For the audience of about 150 people, Shea described his team's reaction when the Nike sales staff views a presentation for a new product and reacts with high fives and enthusiasm.

"We really blew it," he said, "because that means that they'd seen it before or something like it and they were comfortable with it."

Someone in the audience asked what kind of qualities in a potential employee would be valued in the Innovation Kitchen.

First of all, Shea answered, it can be a cynical group because "you're paid to question things."

Four other qualities Shea listed for the ideal Kitchen-mate sounded pretty standard: has initiative, self starter, can take direction, can take it to another plane. Another could be broadly interpreted: socially open and fun. Hard to question a potential job candidate on the last item, he said, but it's usually apparent from an interview or looking at the portfolio of work.'

After his talk, Shea sat for a brief interview to expand on life in the kitchen.

Most people show up between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m., most having spent the morning at either the gym in the Bo Jackson Building or the Lance Armstrong Building. Then there's coffee, he said. And then...he paused. "There really aren't any typical days.

About 125 people work in the Kitchen in teams. Shea's "Special Projects Group" has 14 member and Hatfield directs that team. The team's nickname: The SOO -- an acronym for Special Other Operations, as dubbed by Hatfield.

Shea said the gift that Knight bestowed recently to talk show host Oprah Winfrey was crafted and devised in the Innovation Kitchen. Knight presented Winfrey with a pair of "LunarGlide+ 2 iD" shoes with personalized touches: there's an Oprah Winfrey logo on the tongue, the shoelaces say Winfrey and Knight on each set, and there's a picture of Oprah's favorite tree (an oak) on the inside sole.

And the shoes were nestled in a wood box crafted with recycled gym flooring from a school in Scappoose, built by Jason Badden, whose Kitchen job title is "Innovator."